We went into our strike with a 95% strike-ready vote, empowered by the gains in labor movements across the country. We were in a historic position to push through our urgent demands to improve faculty and student working and learning conditions.

As faculty united we are fighting for 12%. This TA, with the compromise to floor raises, is not enough without substantial guaranteed GSIs. Lecturers who would receive the full benefit of these floor raises also need a substantial GSI.

The contingent 5% is not guaranteed. We will not have labor to withhold over the summer if the 5% is withheld and the bargaining team then returns to the table. We need to go back to the table now and push for more, the loss of 12% has demoralized many.  

I cannot support a TA that doesn’t provide for students, aspirational language does not go far enough.

I believe our working and living conditions can be better. I believe student learning conditions can be better. I believe in the power we have when striking together.

I cannot support a TA that forfeits our right to bargain again until 2025.

I am voting NO. I am willing to risk any gains from this TA to see our struggle through!

When we have students that are telling me, I’m sorry, I just got kicked out of my house. I’m living out of my car. I say, you know, I want to help you and I want to send you to the person who can actually help.

But we don’t have enough counselors. This is why they’re entwined. That is one real kind of consequence. When we don’t have enough counselors, not only do students suffer, but so do those of us who are already overworked...

...All we know is that we should still be on strike. We’re not. It was cut way too quick. I think most of us feel a lot of the anger, which is coming from the fact that we had an incredible amount of organizing and energy behind pulling this off, and it would have been a historic first-time strike at all 23 campuses. But for it to sort of end after a day, it just feels all kinds of things, short-sighted, not strong enough. We all felt very demoralized, and it certainly was not the deal we wanted. It was really nothing new that the chancellor’s office hadn’t already offered us."

I love this school and cherish the opportunity to work with my students and my department. I do not take it for granted. However, while entering my fifth year, it has become clear there’s no path to fair compensation for my time...

I still have hope. I have kept my rain-destroyed strike sign as a reminder of what I felt that day— that we were on the cusp of something big. But instead, we were shut down. Since then, we have been fighting to fix a dysfunctional union that let us down and to win the contract we deserve.

We cannot afford a whittling away of vital public institutions due to budgetary mismanagement. The position of the CSU chancellor shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how strongly we feel about these issues. She has lost sight of our worth. What the students, the CSU and higher education itself are worth."

I am voting “no” on the TA.

I am a contingent academic worker in the CSU. I remind myself every day that the problem is systemic (and not me). Let’s see how this works: The CSU continues to define a lecturer as a “temp,” with usually a master’s degree and teaching lower-division courses. None of these criteria match my experience nor the experiences of many lecturers. Such deliberate mischaracterization of “the CSU lecturer” allows for us to be dispensable to the system in perpetuity. The CSU profits off our labor with no end in sight.  

Voting "no" on the TA is about reiterating the bargaining priorities that the strike was about, and MUCH MORE. I was devastated when the CFA statewide leadership called off the strike. Moreover, the TA creates so much confusion and division. “Raising the floor” for the lowest paid workers has been used to silence any criticism of the TA.

I have concluded that the TA does too little for too few. It does not address our quality of life. We are left at the mercy of ambiguous language such as: “first time contract language” for “lecturers who perform service,” and language on course caps (class size), “protecting against unilateral increases by management.” To me, the TA looks like a business-as-usual approach: Throw some money at some without fundamentally addressing the needs of all. We the CSU faculty who are devalued demand more.

I want to fight for more; for a public education that values faculty who pour their heart and soul into every course and every student. We are building from the ground up a collective academic worker struggle for the future of public education and a stronger, more representative CFA.

I am a CSU lecturer who feels exploited every day. I am voting “no” on the TA.

"My love for the CSU system is intergenerational. I refuse to let the fate of our public university become a for-profit corporation churning out degrees they devalue.

By demanding a wage appropriate for my professional class, adequate working conditions for my colleagues, our students and the health and safety of my CSU community members, I am serving as a steward of the CSU system and the integrity of the degrees it awards.

The role of the CSU executive branch is to engage in fundraising and philanthropic work on behalf of the CSU, not the faculty.

Public administrators should not be awarding themselves staggering pay increases while also claiming insufficient funds to adequately pay their staff or care for their students, even after approving a 34% tuition hike.

Public service executives who cannot perform their primary job functions should be held accountable, not wield their power to punish the people they serve.

This is a public university. This is our university. Now is the time for us to stand united for our CSU."